2008 presidential election

In the meantime, sign up for Alameda County’s email blast service of the results of a select group of races to your cell phone. Click here to sign up.

Races include Alameda County results for: President, Pleasanton Mayor, Berkeley Mayor, Oakland City Council at Large, Berkeley City Council District 4, San Leandro City Council District 2 and Measure V V.

If it works well, Registrar Dave Macdonald says he will expand the service in future elections.

For those who are counting, the score in the East Bay contest to possess the most high-tech election gadgets in the East Bay is:

Contra Costa County: 1

Alameda County: 2.

Both counties launched GIS-based mapping results in the last election but Alameda County is the first to send emails to your Blackberry.

That Obama is winning in California isn’t news, of course. But the potential margin of victory carries huge coattails implications for down-ticket Democrats such as Rep. Jerry McNerney, the Pleasanton freshman seeking re-election in a conservative-leaning district.

Here are the few few graphs of the story:

Barack Obama is poised to win California by the largest margin of any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, a new Field Poll released today finds.

The Democratic presidential candidate leads Republican rival John McCain by 22 percentage points — 55-33 — among likely voters in California. If that margin holds Tuesday, he would set a post-World War II record for a presidential victor in the state. Not even landslide victories in 1980 and 1984 by Ronald Reagan, a former California governor, came close.

Unruly pro-Obama voters invaded the Contra Costa election office in Martinez late this afternoon, including a well-endowed woman who stripped off her Obama tank top in the lobby.

It’s illegal campaign within 100 feet from where people are voting and the county elections office is now open for early voting.

Registrar of Voters Steve Weir approached the women and advised them of the rules and asked them to remove the offending pro-Obama items or he would be forced to call the police.

One woman refused to remove her Obama button and voted anyway, Weir said. A second woman partially covered her Obama shirt with her purse.

But a third took off her Obama tank top to reveal a lovely tan-colored bra, Weir said. She reversed the shirt and put it back on inside out right there in the the middle of the election office.

“She was stunning,” said Weir, a gay man who recently married his longtime partner in the county’s first same-sex marriage ceremony. “I can say that, can’t I?”

The women were also carrying digital and video cameras, also in violation of the law. It is illegal to bring a camera or recording device into the voting booth and take pictures or videos of people voting. (I’ll be watching YouTube to see if this shows up.)

Weir ended up calling the Martinez police. The police warned the women but didn’t arrest them. And they were all allowed to vote.

“We don’t want to stop anyone from voting but this group clearly came with the intention to cause a disruption and that’s not a good idea,” Weir said.

On the other hand, the disrobing does put Weir in the the running for the informal, annual Butte County award, the site of the first recorded incident in which a woman took off her shirt in a voting precinct.

A few weeks ago, there was “Drive for Change,” an appeal to California Democrats to pack their bags and travel to battleground states and campaign for the Democratic presidential ticket.

Plenty of folks are doing it, too. In fact, the response has overwhelmed Obama campaign organizers in Nevada who fear the locals — who often view Californians with considerable and well-deserved scorn — will see it as an invasion. (I lived in Northern Nevada for many years and I know of what I speak.)